Cnut Songs #14: The Dating Quagmire

There's a new dating show on TV this week in which couples act out erotic scenes from big hit films as a way of auditioning prospective partners. And another one where they choose a mate based on their karaoke voices alone. I presume these are a follow up to the one where people stare intently at the naked bodies of potential soulmates (but not their faces) before deciding the best one to go home with. You may prefer to swipe left on both. It's hardly Cilla, is it?

These kind of things make me feel very old. And yet, curiously, rather glad to be very old. I mean, who would want to be a young person trying to navigate the sexual quagmire that is the dating world in the 21st Century? A world where people can dress in as blatantly sexual a manner as they choose, and yet expressing a romantic interest in the wrong person could end you up in hot water?

It was so much easier in the good old days, when folk just went to bars to pull. Not that I ever did that. Not that I ever pulled anyone, anywhere, to be honest. But much as it seemed a pipe dream back then, it did at least seem a more realistic prospect than what goes on nowadays. Old man shouts at sea.

There is a sub-genre of music (mostly country or Americana, though I'm sure it crosses over into other genres - there's probably half a dozen Arab Strap songs that deal with it) about hooking up with people in bars. Take Todd Snider & Loretta Lynn's Don't Tempt Me for a start... 

Or Charity Chic's favourite, Parallel Bars, by Robbie Fulks and Kelly Willis (although there is a twist of Pina Colada to that one)...

My favourite at the moment comes from Hayes Carll, from the amazing KMAG YOYO album (look up the meaning behind that title title: I wanted to do a Top Ten Acronym Songs just to make that track Number One... but I couldn't come up with any others). 

Here's Hayes, alongside Cary Ann Hearst, showing how opposites really can attract... if you're pissed.

(I find the video a little distracting, to be honest. I'd recommend closing your eyes and concentrating on the lyrics. But not as a method of choosing a date.)